


Date Night

by kayethespade



Series: The Adventures of Alicia Shepard [20]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 07:36:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9426899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayethespade/pseuds/kayethespade
Summary: Alicia and Garrus are snowed in at their house on Earth, so Garrus decides to set up an impromptu dinner date.





	

Shepard emerged from the shower with a small sigh, stilling gently wringing out her hair. She grabbed her N7 hoodie and some sweatpants and headed for the kitchen. As she entered the living room, the scene that Garrus had set gave her a moment of pause. The living room table was set with candles and dinner and wine. 

"Seeing as we're stuck here until the power turns back on, I figured I'd try to make the time a bit more pleasant," Garrus explained. Shepard sat down across from him. 

"So. What's the big romantic scheme, Vakarian?" she asked teasingly. 

"No scheme. Just dinner and a chat," he answered. 

"No tango dancing?" Shepard joked. 

"You enjoyed that."

"Only a little," she laughed. 

"It got you into bed, didn't it?" Garrus sighed. 

"You've got me there." 

Shepard took a bite of what looked like leftover chicken and potatoes presented in a fancy way. She smiled over at him. 

"You're doing a pretty good job, so I'll bite," she said. 

"Alright. I don't know much about your past aside from the obvious doom and gloom. When did you have your "first time"?" Garrus asked. 

Shepard groaned. "Okay. So there was this girl in basic that had been one-upping me for the entire three or four months we were there. It was our last night in that camp, and we were going back to our rooms when she jumped me. I'd been working so hard to finally beat her hand-to-hand, and I absolutely wrecked her ass, not literally of course. So I have her pinned in the mud. She looks up at me with this cocky-ass smile, says "You wanna take this back to my place?". We were set to move out at five that morning. Gunnery Chief Ellison berated us for the abysmal states of our uniforms as we rolled into the shuttle two minutes early. That was an interesting day, to say the least." 

"Wow. You ever see her again?" he pried. 

Alicia looked down at her plate. "She was in my squad in the Skillian Blitz. She made it out alive, but she was badly injured. Honorable discharge." 

"It wasn't your fault, Shepard," Garrus assured. 

"I've been telling myself that for years. We still talk sometimes, but she runs a really popular chain of gun stores now, so she's usually busy," she sighed. 

"Well that's good for her," he said. 

"What about you, Vakarian? Who was the first lucky person?" 

"Someone akin to the human "high school sweetheart". Turians all have three years of required military service, though it’s tradition to stay for ten to fifteen. They were more inclined towards engineering, and I was better for combat. We didn't know if we'd ever see each other again, so we had an awkward but overall pretty good first time," he relayed. 

"That’s sweet," Shepard said. 

"They're still working on improving drive cores. They even worked on the Crucible for a while," Garrus continued. 

"I really have to find a way to thank all of the people who helped with the project for the twenty year reunion," she suggested. 

"Maybe you could get them all a fruit basket?" 

"All of them individually? Or should I just fund a giant party comprised only of fruit baskets?" Shepard joked. He laughed a little. 

"How about we scratch that idea and just make a nice monument somewhere instead?" he said. 

"Fine. But there will still be fruit at the reception," she replied. 

"Fair enough. So...what was basic like for you?" Garrus asked. 

"Ellison was...interesting. He was born on Earth as well, so we got along well enough. Obviously, he had to be hard on everyone, but I followed the rules so meticulously that he was sure I'd step out of line someday. Even considering that one time right at the end, I was still his star student. He visited me once while I was grounded on Earth. Joked about how with this whole Batarian business, I'd finally stepped out of line." Shepard stopped to laugh bitterly. "I laugh now, but I didn't think it was very funny at the time. He was overall pretty supportive." 

"I believe I remember your conversation with Ashley back on the SR1 about Ellison. Something about goldbricking?" Garrus said. 

"Right. That was my conversation with Ashley about...why she was so guarded about working with aliens," Shepard replied. 

"I believe you said "I don't think kissing turians will be necessary"." He tried to do an impression of her. 

"I do not talk like that, but oh how wrong I was," she sighed. 

Garrus laughed and reached across the table to hold her hand. "Turian basic and human basic are surprisingly similar. The only difference is that combat specialists have to learn pressure points for every space-faring species in hand-to-hand drills. A lot of squishy anatomy involved. The unintended upside is that turian combat specs can give a mean massage." 

"That is really cool…Wait, that’s where you learned that!” 

“Guilty as charged,” he muttered. 

“I will never get over all the intricacies of other species,” Shepard said. 

"Meanwhile, humans are always surprising. I remember when Theresa was complaining about her mouth hurting. I looked inside and another tooth popped in. Scared me half to death," Garrus grumbled. 

"Where was I during all this?" she chuckled. 

“Off-world on errands or something. Thane explained it pretty well, but that was the most terrifying sight I've ever seen in my life," he sighed. 

"Says the man who thought our daughter was dying when she got her first period," Shepard teased. 

"To be fair, she was acting like she was dying, laying in bed in one position for hours on end. I don't know how humans with those parts do it. No other species has to put up with biological crap like that." 

"I mean, the asari go through a chemical imbalance when they get closer to matriarchal status, and krogan women will sometimes go through a few months where they're more violent than usual, so I feel like we kind of understand each other's struggles," Shepard sighed, finishing off her dinner and moving on to her wine. 

"So wait...why don't you go through...that, once a month?" he asked. 

"People who go into the military get an injection in the arm that keeps them from reproducing for four years at a time. If they're discharged or they want to have a baby before it’s set to wear off, they can get another shot to flush it out. No side effects for either injection," Shepard explained. 

He paused for a moment, just looking at her. "Spirits, you’re amazing." 

"Thanks, honey. So what is it like for turian women in your military?" she asked. 

"As you saw during the war, there weren't a lot of women in high-ranking military positions off-planet. Generally, women facilitate the government while men are off shooting things. That's not to say that women can't or don't go off and shoot things or vice versa. It's just that the administrative military positions that women climb to stayed on Palaven during the war in hopes of fighting off Reaper forces," Garrus answered. 

"Huh. Interesting." 

"You've always been one for strategy," he sighed. 

"Well, for a long time in human society, women were viewed as inferior to men-" 

"Well that's bullcrap." 

Shepard grinned. "Yeah. It took a little over twelve thousand years for us to get our shit together on that." 

"That's still bullcrap. I can't imagine treating anyone differently because of something so trivial," he grumbled. 

"And since I'm Japanese-philippino-"

"I still don't understand what that's supposed to mean." 

"People generally used to think that asian women, like me, were docile, gentle creatures," Shepard continued. 

Garrus laughed. And then he laughed some more. And then a little more after that. "Just. How? How does that make any sense?" 

"Trick question: it doesn't," she joked. 

"I love you, honey," he sighed. 

"I love you too." The lights flickered back on overhead. "Power's back.” 

The endless pinging of their omnitools brought them back to reality. Shepard groaned to herself and started scrolling through all the messages. 

“Back to work?” Garrus asked. 

“Back to work."


End file.
